


the best part, distilled for you

by lesbianbettycooper



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Bad Parenting, Friendship, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Motherhood, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Canon Compliant, Nott-centric (Critical Role), POV Nott (Critical Role), Self-Hatred, a lot of me just making shit up bc i like nott and i Think about her, nott and caleb's super weird relationship but this time she's a lesbian, nott can be little in love w all of the m9 girls....... as a treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24705844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianbettycooper/pseuds/lesbianbettycooper
Summary: veth the brave’s life in not so many parts
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Nott, Caduceus Clay & Nott, Fjord & Nott (Critical Role), Jester Lavorre & Nott, Luc Brenatto & Nott, Nott & Caleb Widogast, Nott & Yasha (Critical Role), The Mighty Nein & Nott, Yeza Brenatto & Nott
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	the best part, distilled for you

**Author's Note:**

> title is from boygenius' 'bite the hand'!
> 
> some follow up warnings that there were no tags for is that nott hates her family in this, not bc of anything in particular, just bc she is very much repressed and hateful in that housewife way and she loves them of course but it comes along with so so much resentment. also nott is a lesbian bc i want her to be :) and there's some implied beaujester and fjorclay but its really not big enough to tag! sorry!
> 
> also this is formatted strangely but once i started i couldnt stop. okay thats it. i hope you enjoy!

“This is the unforgiving light of the morning, time to drop the illusion.”

― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

* * *

**_ii._ **

It is late and her mother is almost drunk. Her father is out, as he often is, and Veth feels _brave_ for no good reason.

She sits on her knees in front of the lounge her mother is reclined on. Mrs Smyt’hh does not turn to look but Veth has always been able to tell when her mother’s attention is on her.

“Do you hate me?”

There is the sound of the grandfather clock ticking from the hall, steady and slow. It grounds Veth in this horrifying moment.

Her mother does not respond for a very long time, long enough that Veth entertains the idea that she had not heard her at all. Oh, how she hopes that she had not heard her at all. Her knees begin to ache as she kneels and it feels almost like that week she spent at her grandmother’s house, where she prayed as punishment. 

_Who is punishing her?_ Veth thinks. _Who is she praying to?_

“Yes.”

The grandfather clock ticks on.

* * *

**_xi._ **

Nott the Brave is a liar. She lies most deeply to herself, she always has. Nicodranas has this horrible habit of making her lie twice as much.

Illusory magic and muttered platitudes and uncomfortable hugs. There is a hole in her heart where love should be and its existence is never more obvious than when Jester jumps up to wrap her arms around her beautiful mother’s neck. 

Nott is sure that Yeza notices it. He’s not a stupid man but… there’s something about Felderwin that makes everyone there prone to turning a blind eye to certain things - a wife’s unhappiness being one of them. That’s not fair really, she thinks that Yeza is incredibly aware of her unhappiness, _uncomfortably_ aware of the way she cuts sentences short and is always looking around the room like she’s searching for an escape. She thinks that he would talk about it with her if she let him, but Nott will not let him, no more than Veth would have.

It is a particularly bad day. One where the weight on her shoulders is so heavy that it feels like she’s really wearing her old skin and it’s not just an illusion. One where she wants to jump back to Xhorhas every time Luc looks at her with those bright brown eyes (not so bright, not really, there’s fear and sadness there and Nott tries very hard to look away from it). One where she finds herself rubbing at her left wrist with her right thumb. One where she will take any chance to distance herself from the reality of her life.

So when Yasha very quietly says that she is going for a walk, Nott jumps up from her seat and places her hand on the lowest part of Yasha’s arm. She doesn’t look like she knows what to do with the touch but she doesn’t flinch away like Nott thought she would.

“You’re going out? Should we come with you?”

“No, Yashie and I are due for some girl time,” Nott ignores the collective look that the Nein give her. “Be back soon!”

Yeza pats Luc’s shoulder and Nott doesn’t hear whatever he says to him because she’s already pulling Yasha out the door.

(She _does_ hear. _“Don’t worry, bud. She’ll be back soon.”_ Yeza is not quiet about it and maybe that is him trying to punish her in the most roundabout way. Or maybe he is simply comforting his child. Nott can hardly ever tell the difference.)

Yasha is quiet as they walk, she looks Nott’s way every now and again and when Veth’s image slips away she does not look surprised or startled. There is a little smile at the corner of her mouth. Nott ignores it, lies to herself about the way it makes her stomach flutter.

Nicodranas is _lively_ and it is _loud_. There is the shouting of people on the docks and the waves of the ocean and the bustling of the city folk. But Yasha is incredibly still and incredibly quiet. She keeps stopping to look at little stalls, brushing her fingers against a gem on a necklace or leaning down to sniff at some flowers in a bouquet. It makes Nott smile beneath her hood, distracts her for a moment from her sticky fingers. She does not buy anything - Nott isn’t sure if she even has money - but she inquires about prices anyway, as if she might come back later for an ugly bracelet. 

Nott trails behind, intermittently touching Yasha’s hand with her own. A safe, steady reminder that she is still here, even in her silence or her wandering, she is still by her side.

She picks a few pockets and snatches a handful of things off of the edge of vendor’s tables. There’s a ring she takes that’s made of cheap metal that was polished enough that it _shone_ , and a bracelet made of shells and fishing line, and even a little carved figurine of a mermaid. But there’s no true prize that Nott tries for until Yasha stops completely and just _stares_ into a display case.

Nott has to duck under her arm to get a better look.

There are two necklaces. One made of silver, the other gold. The silver has a sunflower charm on it and the gold has a daisy. There’s nothing special about them really and yet Yasha simply _looks_ at them for a very long time. She looks and looks and looks and, for the first time that day, she leaves without asking the price.

Nott watches her go with a frown. They’re pretty but Nott does not quite understand the reaction. Still, she reaches up and takes them both without the shopkeep noticing, putting them in one of her empty pockets for safekeeping. Then she sprints to catch Yasha before she turns a corner and she loses her in the crowd.

They’re not out for long after that, it’s getting cold and Nott begins to whine about her feet and Yasha, with a tiny smile, tells her to be quiet before pulling Nott up onto her shoulders in silence. Despite her complaints, the Chateau is not a welcome sight. She wants to tell Yasha to keep walking but her throat closes up and all she can do is watch as the building looms closer.

She climbs down and tugs on the other woman’s hand. Yasha looks down at her, curious.

“Here,” Nott says, opening her hand and presenting the necklaces without fanfare.

Yasha blinks and Nott watches something flick across her eyes - like… love or appreciation or joy. Nott decides it’s probably joy.

“I saw you eyeing them,” she explains when Yasha doesn’t move to take them or say anything. “You did want them, right?”

Yasha exhales, rubs her palm against her forehead and reaches for the daisy one. “Thank you,” she says, turning the necklace over in her hands. “You keep that one.”

And then she leaves to enter the Chateau, clipping the jewellery around her neck as she walks. Nott does the same, tucking it beneath her shirt and slipping through the door before it swings shut.

* * *

**_iii._ **

Veth hates the standstill. She hates the kind of stagnant peace that people in Felderwin fall into. The way that it seems like people will lay down in bed and stay there for so long that moss begins to grow on their still breathing bodies.

Old Edith and her husband sit by the window of their ugly little shack for hours at a time, she knits and he reads and they never _ever_ talk. They just sit. Staring out like a pair of wrinkly mannequins.

She sees them every morning on Whelson as she walks home from the river - basket in her hand, flowers and components and minerals in tiny little jars clanking ever so slightly. Her breakfast turns when she catches them. 

They’re like something out of a horror story to Veth; never again to feel excitement or adrenaline or the feeling of feet colliding hard with the ground as they run. To be so… _stuck_ is her nightmare - a nightmare she’s ashamed of but a nightmare nonetheless.

Edith smiles a gummy smile at her and Veth smiles back the way she taught herself before her wedding. She waves and winks and leaves a wildflower on their letterbox. As soon as she clears their sight, she shudders.

Yeza kisses her cheek when she returns, smiling - so tenderly and sweetly and full of love - at her. He’s the best and kindest man Veth’s ever known so she tries her best to return it, his love, but there is something about the hardness of her eyes that betrays the soft smile on her face. He heads back behind the counter, pushing his glasses up his nose as he begins to read his book on alchemy again. 

Veth tosses the only pair of knitting needles that she owns - a gifted wooden pair, hand-carved by Yeza’s aunt - into the hazardous waste bin as she puts away their supplies.

* * *

**_vii._ **

Beauregard is strange. Her hair is too short and her voice is too deep and her hands are too calloused. She is brash and rude. And because of all these things, she’s ugly and less than - less than what? Nott does not know.

Nott has anger, hate, fear festering inside her chest and it often unleashes itself on Beau - she doesn’t know why. She gets away with it, under the guise of a joke or the fact that, maybe, Beau is not as secure in herself as she seems to be. 

It’s this habit she gets into. Putting Beau down when someone compliments her. Jester usually admonishes her but Beau never does, she just pretends to ignore it or smiles like she thinks it’s true. And Nott takes a moment to feel a little bad before she does it again. And again. And again.

She thinks she might hate Beau, even though she would die for her. The twinkle in Beau’s eye when the group fights scares her - this spark of excitement mixed with this secret desire to sacrifice herself for something she loves - and she wishes it weren’t there. Nott wishes that she didn’t recognise that look on her own face. 

She thinks she might hate Beau in the same way that her father hated the two men who ran the general store in Felderwin.

The first time Nott sees her flirt with a woman, she wants to leave the room. It’s some deep, internalised thing in her that she’s sure she should unlearn but that takes more thinking about herself than Nott can really stand, so she just sits, a grimace on her ugly face. She stays and she watches them talk and she wonders how old Beau was the first time she kissed a girl. Probably the same age Veth was when she first kissed Yeza. She wonders what kissing a girl is like… and, for a moment, she wonders what kissing Beau would be like.

Unenjoyable, probably. Because she’s ugly and a woman and Nott will not analyse why she even considered it. She will not analyse why the fact that Beau has kissed more women than Yeza had popped into her head and she will most definitely not analyse the very brief, uncomfortable thought that maybe it would be nice to kiss Beau. Nott locks those things in one of her many boxes and tosses away the key.

Then she slumps back against Caleb and downs the last dregs of alcohol from her flask.

* * *

**_xv._ **

Cooking with Caduceus is a silent kind of thing. She doesn’t do it often but when she does they move around each other like it’s a practised dance.

He’s whisking something green with his back to her and she’s kneeling on a chair. It’s the first time in a while that she’s kneaded dough without a wedding band on her finger. She feels… _light_.

“What do you think of yourself, Nott?” he asks out of nowhere, still not quite looking at her, even though he’s turned around.

She doesn’t really take time to think out her answer. She wants this conversation over as quickly as possible. “I don’t think of myself.”

He hums thoughtfully for a moment, glancing up at her. His hair is so faded, a pale peach instead of the vibrant pink it used to be. She wonders what exactly that means, wonders if she should ask about it or simply keep working on her bread.

“You should,” he says, interrupting her thoughts. “Think about yourself, I mean.”

“Why?”

He looks at her again, another analytic look - not exactly analysing, that’s not really Clay’s style; it’s more _insightful_ than anything like that.

And then, “I don’t know if you know this. But you _are_ a loveable thing.”

He says this so easily. Like it’s a fact or a tradition or something _real_ and not just _words_. Still, there is a little ping in her mind that urges her to listen to him.

“Okay,” she says, going back to her cooking as Cad does the same.

* * *

**_iv._ **

There’s a tiny little knock on the laboratory door. “Mommy?” Luc calls out, quiet and shaky.

Veth waits a moment. Holds herself still as she pretends she didn’t hear him. Takes a deep breath as she hopes that he just goes back to his room or goes to wake up his father instead. He doesn’t.

The knock is louder this time and the handle shakes a bit as he tries to turn it. He must be high on his tiptoes as he does so.

Veth sighs and puts her twine down, pushing it further back on the table with her buttons. She fixes a smile on her face before opening the door and looking down at him.

“Hey there, buddy,” she greets, warmer than her father, kinder than her mother. “What are you doing out of bed?”

Luc looks up at her and she’s struck by how much he looks like Yeza. Hazel eyes and light brown hair and even lighter brown skin. For all she tries, Veth can hardly see any of herself in him.

“I had a bad dream,” he mutters, scuffing his bare feet on the hardwood floor, careful not to cross the taped yellow caution line. He blinks at her. He has incredibly kind eyes. “Will you lie with me?”

“Of course,” Veth says in a voice as quiet as her son’s. She bends and opens her arms for him to climb into and he does quickly.

 _He’s so small,_ she thinks as she carries him back to his room, his little head on her shoulder. _He’s so light. He’s just a baby._ As she passes the stairs she holds him closer to her chest, fear welling in her gut. _What if he fell? What if she_ dropped _him?_ She bites at her cheek until she makes it to his room.

Tucking him in is strange, she’s done it before but Yeza does it most often. It feels a little like breaking their routine, like maybe she’s sort of stepping on her husband’s toes. She ignores this feeling anyway because Luc looks warm and comfortable swaddled in his mound of blankets.

Veth doesn’t feel the urge to smile but she lays down beside him without ruining her hard work and she pats his shoulder on top of the sheets.

“What was your dream about?” she asks when he just stares at her for a long moment.

“That the goblins got you and took you away,” he says after a long moment, a few tears escaping his eyes. “You didn’t come back.”

Veth sighs deeply, shakily. “Oh, buddy,” she murmurs, wiping his tears. Her hand doesn’t feel like her own but she knows this is what a mother should do, so she does. “I’ll always come back, I _promise_.”

Luc looks a little comforted by that and he turns - painstakingly, under his many covers - over to face her. She brushes her hand over his head and he tries, in vain, to avoid it. Veth smiles tiredly as, a moment later, he yawns.

“Go to sleep, Luc. I’m right here.”

Luc nods a little and closes his eyes. She watches them dart behind his eyelids.

“Love you,” he murmurs, already half asleep.

Her heart aches as her throat closes around the words. He falls asleep quickly after that.

Veth watches his chest rise and fall for a long time - ten minutes, twenty, forty, an hour, two - until she’s certain that he won’t wake up again. And she wipes at her eyes, frowning at her chipped fingernails and dirt beneath them. 

She wants so badly to love this child how her husband does. To see his bright smile and feel joy blossom in her heart and feel warmth spread across her chest. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t know if she even _can_. Veth thinks she must be defective or cursed or terrible in some other way. 

_Why can’t she just be normal?_ The age-old Veth Smyth question. _Why can't you just be like the other girls? Why can't you be like your mother?_

Veth wipes the last few tears from her face before looking at her son again. 

_I love you,_ she thinks. She tries to will it to be true. _I love you. I love you I love you I love you I love you._ Please _, let me_ love _him._ (She doesn’t know if that one is for Luc or Yeza. Probably both.)

Veth brushes Luc’s hair out of his face to press a kiss his forehead and she stays there for a moment. Resting her head against his. She breathes - in and out and in and out - at the same pace as him.

“I love you so much,” she whispers against his skin. The words sound hollow, even to herself.

She leaves the room, closing the door without looking behind her.

* * *

**_viii._ **

Nott loves the freedom she has to be reckless. She loves the fluttering in her stomach when she thinks she’s about to fail at something and she, against all odds, pulls through. She loves the taste of hard liquor on her tongue as she narrowly avoids a trap.

A firebolt shoots out towards her, red and hot and burning the end of one of her braids. She muffles a shriek by biting her tongue but enough sound escapes that a moment later she hears Caleb’s distressed voice in her mind asking what happened.

“Nothing,” she answers, staring down the hall at the stone figure. Hulking and monstrous with a fanged maw and eyes carved from ruby. “Just a trap. Sorry.”

The beast stares back, unmoving. Nott doesn’t know why it unsettles her so much, why the gaping hole in its chest where the spell had come from makes fear come unbidden up her throat.

She flattens herself against the marble wall and takes a very long drink from her flask. Her heart is beating hard in her chest and it’s so loud in her head that she can hardly think. She tries to breathe, take a deep inhale, but all she smells is burnt hair; she tastes it on her tongue. She wants to be sick but instead she drinks from her flask again. And again. And one more time for good measure.

Taking out her copper wire, Nott points back towards where she’d left the rest of the Nein.

“Give me a little while longer,” she whispers, feeling her words reach Caleb, “I got distracted. There was a trap. You can reply to this message.”

She gets a short reply back but she doesn’t really hear it as she continues down the hall. It is like some kind of hell, pure white marble floors and walls and stone monstrosities with deadly spells locked within their chests.

 _Why are we here?_ Nott wonders, inching around a corner. She can hardly remember why they took this job in the first place. Maybe it had to do with someone’s life Before or maybe it has to do with someone’s plans for after After.

It scares her, the idea of them parting. It seems so far off, so… unapproachable but. _But._ Nott sighs and begins to make her way back to the group, careful not to step on any pressure plates again.

There’s this sinking feeling in her gut as she walks. This is not for her. This being the Mighty Nein, Caleb, Jester, love, _happiness_ . That sooner or later this is going to come crashing down and she’ll prove her mother right. Nobody wants her, in any shape or form. Not like this. _Not like_ that _either,_ her mother’s voice mutters.

 _The Mighty Nein_ do _want me,_ Nott thinks suddenly, catching sight of Jessie pulling something out of Cad’s hair. _They care about what I_ am _, not what I’m_ not _._

The truth of that thought rings loudly through her mind as she explains what she saw.

* * *

**_?_ **

_Fear._

_She knows fear well. It is so familiar to her that she could call it a friend. Except not really, because it makes everything about her worse, drags her down, tells her to stay with it when she knows it’s bad for her. Well, maybe it’s a bad friend._

_Fear._

_She doesn’t know why it debilitates her so but it did, and it will, and it does._

_Fear is so deeply ingrained inside of her that she can hardly function without it. She doesn’t even know what she would be like without it. Perhaps more pleasant to be around. Except she’s not, because she hardly feels fear when she’s drunk and nobody has ever had a nice thing to say about Drunk Her._

_Fear._

_She wants it gone. She does not know how to live without it._

* * *

**_x._ **

Nott does not have a crush on Caleb. She tells Beau that she does because, well, she thinks it would be easier if she did. And also, of course, she wanted to know what Beau was going to say. So, she says that she thinks Caleb is handsome, which is not a lie because, from an objective point of view, he’s not _ugly_. It is immediately forgotten though because Beau professes her love for Jester and they spend a few minutes spiralling over that instead.

She wonders later - her back to Caleb’s side, his arm under her head - why she had said that. She’s never thought of Caleb like that, not really, but sometimes she thinks of him like Yeza and sometimes she thinks of him like Luc and sometimes he is a replacement for both. Which she knows is not fair and yet.

With Yeza, she had never wanted him - not like that. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself Before, she can admit that to herself now. Even though it hurts. With Yeza it had been convenient and he had been kind and her mother had smiled in a way that Veth had never ever seen before when she told her about him. So they got married and they had a kid and Veth died.

Caleb is not Yeza. He is not her husband. And he is most certainly not Luc. She does not know why her brain tries to sub him in for them sometimes - when it’s just the two of them and he allows a little smile to slip onto his face. Maybe it is because there is no place in her life for Caleb as he is, maybe it’s because there is no place in Veth’s life for _Nott_.

Nott sighs, biting at one of her nails - _claws_ \- before turning around to look at Caleb.

He’s staring at the ceiling and Nott wonders for a moment what he is thinking about. He does not turn to look at her but he adjusts his arm to a more comfortable position for both of them.

Nott doesn’t ask him what he’s thinking about, that’s not really what they do. But she presses her hand to his side and feels his ribs through his skin and shirt.

“You should eat more,” she mutters, unsure what else to say.

Caleb frowns at the roof. “Why do you do that?”

Nott blinks, pulling her hands back to her chest. “Do what?”

“Treat me like a child.”

She is at a loss for words, so she simply looks at him. Big yellow eyes with catlike pupils, they shine in the moonlight. But Caleb does not look at her, does not see her silent plea to leave this unspoken.

“I’m older than you, I know that. You hardly treat your actual _son_ like this. So, why me?”

Nott turns onto her back to look up. There is a faint watermark above them like perhaps something drips down onto it when it rains. Something in her stomach flips. It’s going to collapse, she thinks suddenly. She sighs.

“I don’t know,” is all she says before she faces away from him again and closes her eyes to sleep.

In the morning, Caleb does not say anything else. In the morning, Nott has no idea whether or not that was a dream.

* * *

**_i._ **

Veth is young the first time she realises exactly what is expected of her. Older than some of the other girls her age, already braiding flowers in their hair, not for fun but to look pretty, for _boys_. She is young the first time she feels expectations settle heavily on her shoulders and push down so hard that her bones begin to ache. 

She’s twelve and she’s still happy. Her brothers tease her and the girls in town scowl and she is distinctly weird. But she is happy and she is carefree and she walks barefoot home from the river, her boots in her hand. She kicks up dust as she walks, arms swinging, trinkets jangling.

Her mother is in the front garden, tending to her flowerbeds and the arching lemon tree she planted when this house was still _her_ mother’s. Veth doesn’t really know what she does all day, if she has a job like her father or if this is all she does. Veth has a passing thought that when she’s older, she’ll have a job - maybe, she’ll be an adventurer like one of those Tal’Dorei ones that that salesman who came through town boasted of selling to! Or maybe, she’ll design kitschy jewellery with the things she finds! (Or maybe, she won’t do either and she’s deluding herself into thinking she’s better than her mother because the thought of staying in Felderwin terrifies her to no end.)

“Good morning, mama!”

Mrs Smyt'hh does not smile, she rarely ever smiles. Veth pretends it doesn’t hurt her feelings.

“Why aren’t your shoes on your feet?”

Veth blinks. “I was playing in the river,” she says to the ground.

Her mother’s disappointment is a palpable thing, so thick in the air that Veth can practically smell it. It is suffocating and it is cold and it hurts when she breathes because her heart is beating so hard in her chest. 

“Of course you were,” Mrs Smyt'hh sighs so heavily that Veth thinks it might crush her. 

“I’m sorry.” She’s not.

“No one is ever going to want you when you act like this, Veth,” her mother laments, she sounds so so sad, like this is the worst thing that could happen to her. Veth looks up and, for the first time in her entire life, she sees tears in her mother’s eyes. “Don’t you want a husband? Don’t you want to be happy?” She rubs viciously at her left wrist with her right thumb. Veth is old enough and smart enough to know that this has been bubbling for years, has been simmering just beneath her mother’s skin. “Don’t you want _me_ to be happy?”

“I’m sorry,” she says again. This time, she can’t tell whether or not she means it.

* * *

**_xvi._ **

The watch is uneventful. A very slow, very boring night where the only sounds are the others’ breathing and the dull sound of Fjord flicking his nail against his boot.

She rubs her temples for a moment, trying to block out the sound when it comes to a stop. She looks up at Fjord in question but he’s looking up. At the speckles of stars, bright in the night sky.

“Thanks,” she mutters, unsure whether or not she wants him to hear her.

Fjord only nods before looking up again, holding his medallion of the Wildmother. She thinks that his tight grip on it and the eyes he’s cast to the sky are to distract him from something on the ground. She doesn’t smile but there’s a warmth in her chest that wasn’t quite there before.

They don't speak for the rest of the watch; still, it’s comfortable. There’s nothing to say and neither of them feel the need to make idle chatter. It’s maybe the first time in Nott’s life that she hasn’t felt that need.

When the sun starts to bathe their friends in warm pink light, they’re both staring at different people.

* * *

**_ix._ **

Jester is difficult not to stare at. She is gorgeous and lovely and puts on such a show of all of her joy. Sometimes, Nott wants to live in it, in the light that pours from her every time she smiles or laughs or simply _exists_.

She is starfished across the inn bed that they’re sharing. One of her arms is draped across Nott’s legs and she is talking reverently about a new book - Tusk Love is apparently old news - when she pivots entirely. 

“What do you think they’re talking about?” she asks, spinning to lean both of her arms on Nott’s legs and stare up at her. 

“Who?” Nott blinks, tucking a strand of hair behind Jester’s ear. “Caleb and Beau? Just research, I think.”

Jester sighs, flipping on her back again. “I hate it when Beau leaves me out of things.”

“Don’t be silly,” she says, chuckling a little bit, pushing at Jes’ soft side with her feet. “They’re not leaving you out. You wouldn’t even be interested in what they’re talking about anyway.”

Jester glares up at the ceiling and shrugs halfheartedly, “I guess.”

“ _Jessie_ ,” Nott teases, coming out of the blankets to climb onto Jester. She leans down, braids brushing across the other girl’s shoulders. “Are you _jealous_?”

“No!” she denies, flushed a very light lilac. “I just wish Beau thought she could talk about smart stuff with _me_ too.”

Nott traces her fingers over Jester’s tattoo. A hug at every moment. She wonders what it would be like to feel that kind of support, that kind of love, that kind of _devotion_. She looks down at Jester, looking up at her with those pleading eyes and sighs.

“She probably just doesn’t want to bore you, Jes. She loves you; if you wanted to talk about smart stuff with her, she totally would.”

She tries to give her that affirmation, that validation that she so desperately and clearly needs but Nott can’t help but think of what a much better job Beauregard would do. Still, Jester smiles and Nott feels her heart swell just a little bit.

Jester pulls her down into a hug and Nott simply laughs into her shoulder. She smells like powdered sugar and floral perfume and Nott thinks it might be her new favourite smell.

“We should stay like this forever,” she announces to the room, bright and happy and _Jester_.

Nott nods, “Yeah, we should.”

* * *

**_v._ **

Escaping the goblins is a feat and it’s terrible and terrifying and Veth resolves to run in the opposite direction of Felderwin. She almost does. But she sees the soft glow of _Home_ through the trees and across the river and her feet - clawed and bare and _green_ \- take her towards the apothecary instead.

It’s strangely dark, the shadows making the town look droopy and hunched and somehow sombre. She finds herself touching certain stones, slick from the rain, to make sure it’s wetness is nothing more sinister. She is _unbearably_ paranoid.

There’s no one in the streets - if she has it right, it’s Grissen night, there _should_ be people in the streets. All of the windows are closed and the lights are dim and Veth assumes this is because of what happened to them. Or maybe it’s always been like this, closed up tight and uncomfortably still. It’s only been a month but she can’t remember exactly.

She takes a shuddering breath and presses herself against a shadowed wall. Her teeth - her _fangs_ sink into the inside of her mouth, the soft lining of her cheek is littered in sores from her incessant biting. If Veth were a braver woman she would have chewed her tongue off the first time they made her speak their language; if Veth were a braver woman she would have ended this nightmare already.

Pressing a cold hand to her hot face, she continues towards the store. It feels a little like when she was younger and she’d sneak out of her house to search for trinkets. Slinking through the Felderwin streets, quiet as a mouse, light on her feet. Her mother never caught her in the act, she doesn’t think she’d ever even tried to really, but Veth is sure that she always knew and that she just didn’t care enough to admonish her for it.

When she finally gets _there_ , she could almost cry. The sight of her house has never comforted her. Not when she was young and the torment of her brothers and the coldness of her mother and the disinterest of her father awaited her behind the big mahogany door. Not when Yeza purchased the store and stood on his toes to cover her eyes with his hands and when he pulled them away he grinned at her so lovingly that it made her stomach turn, that she couldn’t help but smile back. Not when she returned from the river - boots muddy, flowers in her hair - and it was her loving husband and darling boy waiting on the other side of the door.

Even now, as she watches from across the street, she does not feel comfort. Relief is a word that works and… love. She feels love and the need to stay in Felderwin, if only to make sure her boys are safe. She knows that she can’t though, that they would rather her dead than like... _this_. 

Truthfully, she does not want to stay, has never wanted to stay, and that alone is enough to bring her to tears. She has tried so hard to get back to them and now she knows that she does not _want_ to get back to them. She hates Felderwin and she hates her parents. And, while she loves them dearly, while she would _die_ for them, Veth hates the fact that she has a husband and a child. And she hates _herself_ for that fact.

She’s pulled from her thoughts when she sees a window upstairs fill with low orange light. The light, dim as it may be, filters out into the street - soft and yellow and catching floating dust particles in the air. She breathes deeply and creeps a little closer to the apothecary, side pressed to the stone wall beside her.

Yeza is there, suddenly, bustling around the kitchen tiredly. He looks older in a very young way. He’s older than her by a year - or two, she can’t remember - and it’s showing terribly. Even from the street and the soft yellow light, Veth can see the grey growing in at his temple.

He turns and smiles and then Luc is there too. Lifted onto the counter by Yeza - Veth never let him sit up there when she was in the kitchen, though he always wanted to. He does not look happy but he doesn’t look sad either and that’s good. She has only ever known that Not Sad is the goal, that Not Sad is what you should strive for when you have a child.

Luc swings his legs, even as he closes his eyes, his head lolling to the side for two seconds before he pops back up, blinking rapidly. She smiles just a little and turns away from the window before Yeza can reappear.

The rat meat in her stomach does not churn for the first time in weeks.

* * *

**_xiii._ **

It’s something of a revelation when Nott- _Veth_ realises that she can apologise to Beau. It’s not really a thing she’s ever done before but there’s been self-reflection lately so she corners Beau late one night. Her slippers are almost silent as she rushes to catch Beau before she enters her and Jessie’s room.

Beau stinks a little bit of booze and she does not stumble when Nott grabs her arm but Veth gets the impression that were her reflexes any slower, she might have. Beau is tipsy a lot lately, there is an uncomfortable mirror image in watching her friend self destruct. But Veth thinks that she can’t be the one to bring it up.

Beau is looking at her funny. Veth thinks she might not be able to place her face but the look doesn’t go away even when she finally speaks.

“I’m sorry.” There is no elaboration needed, it is clear what she is apologising for. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Beau says and Veth can immediately tell that she knows who she’s talking to and what she’s talking about.

“No, Beau, please.” Her hands want nothing more than to take Beau’s in her own. “I really am sorry.”

Beau sighs but she nods and smiles - sad and exhausted and minuscule but a smile nonetheless. “Okay, Nott,” she mutters and she does not correct herself.

Veth can’t quite tell why her stomach is flipping. If it’s from being called Nott instead of Veth in a bad way, if it’s because of Beau’s smile and her soft voice and her steady hands, or if, worst of all, it’s because she misses being called Nott. Two out of three are probably right.

* * *

**_?_ **

_The Mighty Nein._

_Before: everything_ bad _that’s ever happened to her._

_After: everything_ good.

_It is straightforward and simple and Nott can never explain it to anyone but it is true. It is the truest, most honest thought that Nott has ever had. Even from before she was Nott._

* * *

**_vi._ **

The cherry wine was not worth it, Veth can say that for certain. Besides the fact that it got her thrown into a jail cell, it stuck to the roof of her mouth and settled grossly in her stomach. It _still_ sits grossly in her stomach.

She swallows her bile and rubs at her temples. This isn’t good, she can’t be in one place for too long. She can’t be behind these bars and in these chains. She can’t, she can’t, she can’t. She can hardly breathe in this musty cell.

“Are you alright?”

Veth almost jumps out of her cell. There’s a man on the other side of the cell, hidden in a corner under a dirty brown coat. He has a Zemnian accent. She stares at him for a very long time before she realises she can breathe again.

“Yeah.”

It feels like she’s talking to no one, like she’s losing her mind. He is so still, worryingly slow, but a glint of moonlight crosses his face and she sees that he is looking at her.

“Are _you_ alright?” she asks, scratching at the stone wall with her claws.

He nods, slowly like it’s taking a moment to understand what she’s saying. She moves so that she sits opposite to him, in the other walled corner of the cell.

The man simply turns his head to watch her move.

“Why are you here?” Veth asks, not quite sure why she is not more afraid of him. She should be, she thinks, and yet she cannot find it in herself to be so. “Like… what did you do?”

He only shrugs and then mutters, “What is your name?”

Veth blinks, frowning; her nervous scratching halts. _What_ is _her name?_

“Why?” she stalls. “Do you only kill people after you know their names or something?”

His mouth lifts into something halfway between an amused smile and a pained grimace. Veth can’t tell whether the exhale he lets out is supposed to be a laugh or a huff or something else entirely.

What is her name? She doesn’t think it’s Veth anymore. This body, this… skin is not Veth’s. It is not anything. It is worthless and awful and heavy like a brick. It is not pretty and it is not good, it is simply _Not_.

The man waits patiently. It’s like it’s his job or it’s all he’s ever done. Sit and wait. Breathe quietly as he waits for her to answer his question.

“I, uh, I’m Nott,” she says, rather quietly, ashamedly. She sees him nod in the darkness and continues, “And you? Your name?”

He takes a moment, half of a moment really. The briefest of beats to answer. “Caleb Widogast,” he claims and she has no reason not to believe him so she does.

There’s the sound of movement just outside the double doors leading into where the cells are and Caleb stares, laser-focused as if he could see through the wood.

He turns to her suddenly, a gleam of _something_ in his eye. “What do you think of escape?”

Nott the Brave grins for the first time in her short life.

* * *

**_xiv._ **

Nott gets her body back and it’s… fine. She is suddenly “Veth” again and her skin is soft and it’s brown, it’s nice to be _right_ . But there is something inside her still, deep down, that does not _feel_ Right. 

She is so so happy! Her body was taken from her and she is glad to be back, really. But she is also terrified at the thought that it was _herself_ that was wrong, not her body. So that night, it is easy to pretend that she and Yeza are going to have sex, though they haven’t since they found him. And it is easy to pretend that she is going to enjoy it.

Instead, Yeza cooks her dinner, soup he used to make for her whenever she was ill. Instead, Yeza takes her free hand in his and smiles at her. Instead, Veth, Nott, whoever, she cannot tell the difference anymore, cries into her hot and creamy soup while her husband who she does not love holds her through it.

“I’m sorry,” she cries into his shoulder.

“Don’t apologise to me, Veth,” he mumbles into her hair and that time it’s nice. From Yeza, that name is nice. “There’s nothing to apologise for.”

“There’s so much,” she whispers, her lips move differently and it’s strange, not terribly bad or incredibly good. She’s never noticed how her lips move before. “I don’t want you.”

She thinks for a very long moment that she spoke to quietly and he did not hear her. Or that he suddenly turned into her father and was playing the ignorant fool. Or that she had turned into her mother and was breaking his heart in two, leaving him irreparably broken.

And then he nods and holds her a little bit tighter but it feels like maybe looser too. Because her lungs feel freer and clearer than they have for hours.

“You don’t have to apologise for what you can’t control.”

Veth hears something in his voice like shame and she feels some inexplicable need to make it go away. (And a deeper need to tell _somebody_ what she’s buried for so long.)

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think that I want… _any_ men.”

Nott can feel his surprise and then the understanding too.

“Oh,” he says, rubbing her back a little. “Then _I’m_ sorry.”

Veth thinks that if she could smile, she would but her face feels stuck and sore and heavy and she doesn’t really _want_ to smile. So, she just exhales a tiny bit. “Don’t be sorry.”

“What does this mean for Luc?” Yeza asks suddenly, like it’s all he’s ever thought about.

Nott blinks and disentangles herself from Yeza’s arms. She picks up her forgotten spoon and shrugs, “I really don’t know. I’ve _never_ known. This all isn’t for me.”

Yeza sighs and it is maybe the first time that she has ever sensed anger from him. “Great,” he mutters.

“I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t tell her not to be this time.

* * *

**_xvii._ **

It is late and Nott is sober. She is brave - it is in her name after all - but there is something terrifyingly intimate and private about lying beside someone, not out of necessity but out of want.

She is still not comfortable on the water, she doesn’t think she ever will be. There is a familiarity to it though, to the tilting and the bumping and the slightly turning stomach. It’s relatively still tonight, just gentle swaying, and Veth finds it in herself to ask a nonsense question.

“Do you love me?”

It is not a still silence that follows. There are people bustling around on deck and gulls circling, crooning loudly. The ocean itself is never entirely quiet and the movement keeps a certain kind of anxiety from crawling up her spine.

Still, she hears Caleb’s breath hitch. Still, she hears him gulp and work his throat. Still, she hears him turn to face her and _still_ , she cannot bring herself to look at him.

“Of course. We all do.”

Her heart feels as big as the ocean.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> i think that when s*m makes nott unlikable, it’s misogynist and homophobic but when i make nott unlikeable it’s woke actually. so yeah! i finally finally finished this fic and its so embarrassing how much its come to mean to me..... but i love nott so much and she deserves the world and there is a sort of vague arc in this but it's mostly about how nott doesnt actually HAVE to do anything to get the love that she deserves. she does not HAVE to live up towhat everyone wanted her to be.
> 
> also this fic is subtitled: yes, my favourite books are little fires everywhere by celeste ng and sharp objects by gillian flynn. no, i don't think that says anything about me <3
> 
> anyway! thanks for reading if u made it this far! u can find me on twitter @/aelwynabernant and on tumblr @/kendallroydyke !!


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